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Wednesday, December 16, 2015

Secret Six #9 Review and *SPOILERS*

Written By: Gail Simone

Art By: Tom Derenick, Jason
Wright, Travis Lanham

Cover Price: $2.99

Release Date: December 16, 2015

Mind Your Elder Gods

*Non-Spoilers and Score At
The Bottom*

How loyal are you? Are you
“help a friend move” kind of loyal? Or are you just “warn a friend before they
step in dog shit” kind of loyal? I guess what I’m asking is, would you free an
Elder God and put the fate of our planet in jeopardy for me, baby? Would your
loyalty put me above what we know as reality in the third dimension,
sweetheart? Because you know I would free all the racist Old Gods of
Lovecraftian myth for you, I would invoke Ba’al and sacrifice a lamb to
Baphomet and desecrate several holy sites of many major faiths for your love.
That’s what you mean to me, can you dig it? Why don’t we snuggle up together
and read the latest issue of Secret Six, see if it doesn’t put us in the
mood…for blasphemy.

Explain It!:

If you will recall, the
Sexy Six was hanging out at the bottom of the ocean watching Catman fight
Aquaman, when the magic bubble holding back the crushing waters began to crack.
If you don’t recall, there is a page of recap done by the Ventriloquist’s doll,
Ferdie, who breaks the fourth wall to do so. I love to see this in comic books and I
will always praise it when I see it. I don’t know that this kind of recap would
work for every comic, but taking a page to address the reader and bring them up
to speed is always a good idea. If it can be creatively woven into the
narrative, all the better. Anyway, things are looking bleak for our team, when
Porcelain realizes they can shatter the alabaster pillar that both saps Black
Alice’s life force and keeps the slumbering Elder Gods from taking over
reality. Upon blasting the pillar, the crew is called back to breathable
airspace by the creepy “real” Atlanteans, the Children of Arion. Yeah, you guys
are the “real” Atlanteans, that’s why you do magic on top of a building instead
of in the water. Before he gets zapped away, Aquaman warns Thomas “Catman”
Blake not to screw with any more of these alabaster pillars, and Blake
essentially tells him to get bent.

Back at Scandal Savage’s
apartment, Black Alice is still sleeping off the wicked hangover she got from
sapping the powers of all the magic users in the DC Universe, being tended to
by Rag Doll because Scandal Savage is a bad parent or guardian. Black Alice
begins waking up and mumbles something about not trusting the obviously
not-trustworthy fake Atlanteans, and then using Zatanna’s backwards magic she
accidentally summons some Griffins, which is like using someone’s coffee maker
without permission and accidentally causing a hazardous nuclear spill. Later,
we find ourselves in the mining town of Perdition in rural New England, where
the Children of Arion have sent the Secret Slicks to blow up the next pillar.
For some reason, they have to dress up in Victorian era clothing, which is
awesome because it means Ferdie wears a bowler hat. Strix demands to wear a
prom dress, which no one in their right minds would deny her.

Approaching Perdition, a
really creepy girl runs up to the gang and asks if they have any food. We then
see the other members of the town, all creepy and emaciated and looking like
Fagan’s urchins from Oliver Twist. They’ve apparently been held in the thrall
of an Elder God that sleeps at the bottom of the town’s mine, who doesn’t let
them die and also seemingly doesn’t let them eat. I mean, that is just rude as
hell. If you’re going to live forever, you should at least be able to shovel
Twinkies in your face hole. What’s the difference? It won’t kill you. The Sick
Six go down into the mine to destroy the alabaster pillar, where they meet an
emaciated Swamp Thing and…you know what? I’m going to leave it right there,
because if you’ve read the review this far and haven’t been enticed to check
this book out, then you’ve got no soul and would probably rather read All-New, All-Delicious Fightin’ Frappe
Force. So go. Go ahead and read All-New,
All-Delicious Fightin’ Frappe Force, we’ll stay over here with our cool
comics about emotionally-damaged people whose only redeeming traits are loyalty
to one another and somehow, against all odds, appearing cute sometimes.

This is the kind of comic
you want to hug to your breast and swoon around the room in puppy love over. I
know I often glow over Dale Eaglesham, but I am here to say that Tom Derenick
is no slouch, folks, indeed if the two of them leapfrog issues of drawing this
book, I’ll be perfectly happy with that. What you need to do is stop being a
jerk and read this book, because it’s weird, it’s funny, and all of the
characters are so expertly-written by Gail Simone that you’ll want to invite
them into your home. Which you shouldn’t, incidentally. I mean, maybe you could
have a chat with Porcelain or Big Shot, but if you invited Catman or the
Ventriloquist into your house, it would be over. I’ll assume you wouldn’t
invite Strix in if you had your druthers, being that she’s covered head-to-toe
in a Talon costume. And I suppose if Black Alice wanted to come over, you
couldn’t rightly do much about it.

Bits and Pieces:

Our heroes get out of the
frying pan and into the fire. The “frying pan” in this instance is the threat
of being crushed by an entire ocean, and the “fire” would be a rural New
England mining town from the nineteenth century held captive by a giant wad of
phlegm with an eyeball. I suppose it’s a pretty weak metaphor. You’ll love the
art, you’ll love the writing, you’ll love this book, and if you don’t then you
need to go down to the arcade and take a spin on the Love Tester. You’ll probably come up as “Cold Fish.”

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